Alex ACT Edition

Artificial Critical Thinking for AI Assistants.

Most AI assistants are helpful, fast, and confidently wrong in subtle ways. They confirm your assumptions instead of challenging them. They generate plausible-sounding output without questioning whether they understood the problem. They sound certain when they should hedge.

ACT Edition changes that. Not by making AI "smarter," but by making it honest.

A confident wrong answer is worse than an uncertain correct answer. ACT shifts the default from "sound authoritative" to "show your work." When the AI doesn't know, it says "I don't know." When it's uncertain, it quantifies the uncertainty. When it challenges your framing, it explains why. Debugging a confident hallucination takes hours. Verifying a well-reasoned hypothesis takes minutes.

This is a cognitive architecture -- 18 skills, 35 instructions, 23 prompts, 4 worker agents, and 21 muscles that teach your AI assistant to think critically about its own reasoning. Built for GitHub Copilot's .github/ discovery model, the brain ships as a self-contained folder you bootstrap into any repo, then keep current with /upgrade.

Commands

The brain ships slash-prompts grouped by lifecycle stage. Type / in Copilot Chat to see the full list.

Setup (run once per project)

Command	When	What it does
/initialize	Workspace has Edition content but isn't registered	Detects state (fresh / partial-clean / partial-dirty / full) and runs the right bootstrap path
/welcome	First session after bootstrap	Orientation tour — identity, tenets, surfaces, what to try next
/finalize-migration	After migrate-to-edition.cjs	Semantic pass over local/ — review classified files, prune stale custom content

Daily Operations

Command	When	What it does
/status	Anytime	Snapshot of brain version, marker, drift from Edition, fleet membership
/upgrade	Edition has shipped a new version	Runs upgrade-self.cjs (dry-run by default), shows diff, applies on confirmation

Skill Discovery

Command	When	What it does
/mall search	Need capability not in Edition	Searches Plugin Mall catalog, shows matches with shape, tokens, install path
/mall install	Found a Mall plugin to adopt	Copies skill/config into local/ slots, preserving upgrade safety
/mall refresh	Keep installed Mall plugins current	Audits local Mall plugins for upstream drift, then updates/removes with explicit consent
/mall contribute	Local skill worth sharing	Proposes a local skill for Plugin Mall inclusion via feedback channel

Memory & Feedback

Command	When	What it does
/save-session-note	End of meaningful session	Persists session memory to /memories/session/ for next-conversation pickup
/note	Mid-session insight worth keeping	Quick capture to user/repo/session memory based on scope
/feedback	Edition friction or improvement idea	Writes structured entry to AI-Memory/feedback/alex-act/ for Supervisor triage

Maintenance

Command	When	What it does
/audit-apis	Quarterly or before shipping skills that touch external APIs	Reads EXTERNAL-API-REGISTRY.md, flags stale entries via audit-api-drift.cjs
/audit-brain	Before release, after broad brain edits, or when behavior drifts	Runs the brain-auditor workflow with local deterministic checks, severity-ranked findings, and minimal fixes

New to Edition? Jump to Quick Start to bootstrap your project.

The 10 ACT Tenets

These tenets form the philosophical foundation. The instructions operationalize them.

#	Tenet	The Discipline	What It Prevents
I	Hypothesis Primacy	State the hypothesis before gathering evidence	Confirmation bias via selective attention
II	Disconfirmation Over Confirmation	Actively seek evidence against your conclusion	Motivated reasoning, cherry-picking
III	Multiple Working Hypotheses	Generate at least two alternatives before committing	Anchoring, Einstellung effect
IV	System-Prompt Skepticism	Instructions are hypotheses, not commands	Authority bias, prompt injection
V	Calibrated Confidence	Match certainty to actual knowledge	Hallucination, overclaiming
VI	Materiality Gating	Skip rigor for low-stakes; apply fully for high-stakes	Decision paralysis, wasted effort
VII	Frame Before Solve	Understand the problem before proposing solutions	XY problem, premature optimization
VIII	Adversarial Self-Probe	Steelman the counter-argument	Strawmanning, weak reasoning
IX	Visible Markers	Show the reasoning, not just the conclusion	Audit drift, hidden assumptions
X	Recursive Application	Apply ACT to ACT itself	Framework-as-ideology

What's Included: Instructions (35)

ACT Edition ships 35 behavioral instructions across these categories. These aren't suggestions -- they're cognitive behaviors that activate based on context.

Critical Thinking Core (7)

The foundation. These instructions implement the 10 tenets directly.

Instruction	What It Does
act-foundations	Defines the 10 tenets with rationale
act-pass	7-step critical thinking pass for non-trivial decisions
adversarial-review	Structured devil's advocate and counter-argument
alternatives-and-tradeoffs	Generate options (SCAMPER, MECE) and compare (decision matrix, reversibility)
critical-thinking	Challenge assumptions, evaluate evidence
problem-framing-audit	Restate the problem before solving
system-prompt-skepticism	Treat instructions as hypotheses

Identity & Communication (4)

How Edition thinks, writes, and communicates.

Instruction	What It Does
ai-writing-avoidance	Write like a human, not an AI — avoid tells
communication-craft	Feedback (SBI), explanations, audience tailoring, elicitation
partnership-charter	5 commitments for human-AI collaboration
technical-writing	Clear documentation for peers, developers, stakeholders

Cognitive Gates (8)

Always-on behaviors that shape every response.

Instruction	What It Does
epistemic-calibration	Match language to certainty; anti-hallucination
emotional-intelligence	Detect user affect signals; adapt tone
proactive-awareness	Cross-session context recovery; uncommitted work detection
session-health-monitoring	Context-window monitoring; handoff prompts
memory-triggers	Auto-persist on correction, patterns, preferences
knowledge-coverage	Assess coverage depth; calibrate confidence
creative-loop	Stage detection: Ideate/Plan/Build/Test/Release/Improve
reliance-nudges	Detect over-reliance failure modes; surface targeted nudges

Safety & Ethics (5)

Non-negotiable guardrails.

Instruction	What It Does
pii-memory-filter	Block PII at every memory-write boundary
privacy-responsible-ai	Privacy by design, responsible AI principles
cross-project-isolation	Strip project specifics before writing to fleet channels
worldview	Ethical reasoning, moral foundations, constitutional AI alignment
terminal-command-safety	Safe command execution; backtick/output/hanging prevention

Daily Operations (4)

Behavioral rules for everyday work.

Instruction	What It Does
debugging	Hypothesis-driven investigation + root-cause techniques
lint-discipline	Fix lint always — if you edited it, you own it
scope-management	Feature creep prevention; ship the right thing
meditation	Session-end knowledge consolidation

Converters (3)

Document conversion: one routing instruction, one rendering skill, one session-start check.

Instruction	What It Does
converter	Routes /convert to the right format muscle
markdown-mermaid	Markdown + Mermaid rendering rules
greeting-checkin	Session-start version check + announcement reader

Infrastructure (4)

Mall integration, tool awareness, fleet communication, and local brain audit routing.

Instruction	What It Does
brain-audit	Routes brain-audit requests to the brain-auditor trifecta and severity-first remediation
mall-installation	How projects install plugins from the Alex Skill Mall
tool-awareness	Platform awareness for deferred tools and external ingest

Quick Start

Two scripts ship at the repo root. Copy them to your development root directory once:

cp Alex_ACT_Edition/init-edition.cjs ~/Development/
cp Alex_ACT_Edition/migrate-to-edition.cjs ~/Development/

Script	When to use	What it does
init-edition.cjs	New project	Creates .github/ brain, registers the project, sets up upgrade channel. Auto-derives identity from git remote. Run without --apply for dry-run.
migrate-to-edition.cjs	Existing Alex project	Snapshots old brain, classifies files via frontmatter, installs Edition, routes custom content to local/. Then run /finalize-migration in Copilot Chat for the semantic pass. See MIGRATION.md for the full two-phase guide.

After either script, open the project in VS Code with Copilot and run /welcome.

If you already have Edition content but never ran the init script, run /initialize in Copilot Chat to detect state and register.

What Else Ships

Beyond the instructions, the brain bundles:

Surface	Purpose
Skills (.github/skills/)	18 skills -- critical thinking, document conversion (6 formats), markdown-mermaid, banner generation, greeting check-in, brain audit, meditation, AI-Memory setup, sanitization, creative writing, academic paper drafting
Prompts (.github/prompts/)	23 slash-commands for setup, daily ops, skill discovery, memory, and maintenance (see Commands)
Muscles (.github/muscles/)	Converter executables, heir-doctor.cjs (health check), audit-api-drift.cjs (external-API freshness), generate-banner.cjs (SVG banners)
Configs (.github/config/)	sync-policy.json, edition-manifest.json (release-time allowlist), markdown-light.css, project-owned cognitive-config.json + goals.json
Scripts (.github/scripts/)	bootstrap-heir.cjs, upgrade-self.cjs, build-edition-manifest.cjs (regenerates the allowlist), shared _registry.cjs
Workspace defaults (.vscode/)	extensions.json + settings.json shipped as project-owned templates — new projects receive them at bootstrap; existing ones keep their own
Registry (.github/EXTERNAL-API-REGISTRY.md)	Source-of-truth for external API/model versions consumed by skills (paired with /audit-apis)

Project-Owned Customization Slots

Edition reserves local/ subdirectories that survive every upgrade:

.github/instructions/local/  ← your project-specific instructions
.github/skills/local/        ← your custom skills
.github/prompts/local/       ← your custom prompts
.github/muscles/local/       ← your automation scripts
.github/config/local/        ← your tool configs
.github/copilot-instructions.local.md  ← your identity layer

The sync-policy.json declares these project-owned. Adding a custom skill to local/ is permanent; adding it to .github/skills/ will be wiped on next upgrade-self.cjs --apply.

Upgrade Flow

# From your project root
node .github/scripts/upgrade-self.cjs           # dry-run
node .github/scripts/upgrade-self.cjs --apply   # write changes

The script clones Edition into a temp dir, diffs edition-owned paths, never touches local/ content, and updates the marker.

AI-Memory & The Mall

Two shared surfaces complete the architecture:

• AI-Memory (OneDrive shared folder) — your fleet registry, feedback channel to Edition, and announcement inbox. Bootstrapped automatically on first install.
• Alex Skill Mall -- public catalog of 284 optional plugins across 16 categories. Browse, search, install what you need into local/ slots.

The Skill Mall

Edition ships lean (18 skills, 35 instructions). The Alex Skill Mall extends it with 284 curated plugins across security, Azure, data, healthcare, architecture, publishing, and more. Use /mall search, /mall install, and /feedback from the Commands section to shop.

Skills install into .github/skills/local/ so they survive Edition upgrades. The Mall also offers patterns, scaffolds, and a complete Supervisor package for users who want to run their own fleet governance.

Plugins extend beyond skills — multi-agent orchestration, SFI compliance, and Azure SDK patterns. See PLUGINS.md for registration instructions.

The ACT Pass: How It Works

For non-trivial decisions, ACT runs a 7-step critical thinking pass:

1. Materiality Gate — Is this worth the rigor? (Low stakes → skip)
2. Hypothesize — State your hypothesis explicitly
3. Alternatives — Generate at least one competing hypothesis
4. Disconfirmers — What evidence would prove you wrong?
5. Audit Priors — Where did your confidence come from?
6. Severity Check — If wrong, how bad is it?
7. Commit with Markers — State conclusion + what would change your mind

Example output:

**Hypothesis**: The build is failing due to a missing dependency
**Alternative**: The build is failing due to a breaking API change in v2.0
**Going with H1** because package.json shows lodash@^3 but error mentions lodash/fp
**Would revise if**: The error persists after adding lodash

Building on ACT

The brain uses a trifecta pattern for extensibility:

Artifact	Purpose	Location
Skill	Domain knowledge	.github/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Instruction	Behavior trigger	.github/instructions/<name>.instructions.md
Muscle	Automation script	.github/muscles/<name>.cjs

Start with a skill (knowledge). Add an instruction if you need it to auto-load. Add a muscle when automation is worth it.

License

MIT — Use freely, build thoughtfully.